Whom for Mobile Tests How Well You Know Your Friends

The upcoming social game will see players predicting their friends' answers to lighthearted or serious questions.

While social media may help us keep in touch, and we may even believe we know each other better via these connections, tech entrepreneur Joey Caroni is challenging this assumption with Whom, an upcoming real-world and mobile party game, which tests how well players really know their friends, and what they think about each other.

Whom will be part social game, part marketing platform. As a game, players will challenge their friends via Facebook connect, and complete ten rounds of questions in each game. On each turn, the active player chooses four question categories, ranging from school and jobs to the apocalypse. These categories are added to a spin wheel, which determines the actual active category. From there, all players answer the same multiple choice question about themselves and the other player(s), with the goal of accurately predicting the answers the other users will pick.

For instance, in a question about the apocalypse, players may be asked what they and their friends would do with only hours before the world’s demise. Options like “spend time with loved ones” or “complete items on my bucket list” are presented (among others), and players drag their picture, as well as their friends’ to the appropriate answers.

Meanwhile, the Whom marketing platform will allow advertisers to interact with users via branded and sponsored games. A game could be centered on a television show, for instance, challenging players’ knowledge of the show’s characters. The show’s writers would answer the questions on behalf of their creations, and players would be prompted to watch a trailer or clip for the show in exchange for playing the game for free.

Furthermore, Whom has plans to partner with individual celebrities, from actors and musicians to YouTube stars. In this case, celebrities would answer all of the game’s questions a single time, and users would then challenge their knowledge of the celebrity through another branded game.

With this marketing platform, the goal, says Caroni, is to “create new advertising experiences that are mutually beneficial to our players and to the brands. We are anti-banners and pro-content.”

In addition to the Whom mobile game, a real-world card game is in development, offering a similar experience. Caroni’s team is seeking $20,000 in funding via Kickstarter, and has received $2,900 as of this writing. The mobile game will be released even if the Kickstarter isn’t successful, but a successful campaign will shorten the game’s time to release.